#CityCrawler - 2017(my vent)

I live in Wuse, lucky me. It’s a very big advantage for me as the City Crawler, considering it takes me approximately 5 minutes to get to anywhere in Abuja and maybe 10 to 15 minutes to get to the out skirts. But tonight I knew what it felt like to be a Lagos resident, to come home, tired, hungry, frustrated and burned out. I was stuck in traffic.

This was no normal traffic; it was borne out of everyone’s need to ‘ENTER FIRST’. Allow me to explain. I live near the NNPC mega station and for some reason the road to my house gets totally blocked when there is a little bit of queue, so you can imagine the lunatic line of cars that formed due to panic buying or where the queues really back?


On Saturday, the love of my life (don’t get ahead of yourself, I’m talking about my mom) came into town and she asked me to take her somewhere, her driver didn’t know the way. complained of fuel and she asked me why I didn’t just go to Wuye, so to wuye I went and queued for 2 minutes and I got a full tank.
So what was this 1 hour hold up about???????

Eugenia Abu – yes, that Eugenia Abu, Ace Broadcaster, Writer and one of the women I admire, published a book recently ( she has new work out though). A particular story in her collection of short stories titled ‘ In the blink of an eye’ caught my attention. I didn’t pay attention in class that day when the title of the story was said but the reason that story caught my attention was because;

1. It was the year of my birth and
2. It was almost as if she wrote it just a few days before

The story was about Fuel Crises!


She described very clearly, the drama taking place in the petrol station. The common man struggling to get into the line, the quiet civil servant queuing, the military man jumping the queue, the line up of jerry cans, yellow, white, blue. The army officers with their long whips, to brutalize anyone who came in their way. That was 1983. I experience all this tonight while waiting for traffic to move. I could see my house, but I was stuck there. I am typical Abuja, 5 – 10minutes transit. For me, this was torture. All becasuse...

Nigeria is 50 on the 1st of October. What happened with vision 2010??? What happened to food for all by the year 2000? We should be telling a different story by now, don’t you think??? Where do we take these questions to?????\


I believe in Nigeria, I believe in Nigerians. But I don’t want my child to listen to fela’s music in 2017 or read this blog years fron now and consider it Apt like i did Eugenia's story. I want them to wonder, what are this old folks on about, but our country is perfect, was Nigeria ever like how they describe?
I hate questions……….


Ace Broadcaster, Writer, Poet, Mother, Wife - Eugenia Abu and CC